~ Honest Thoughts and Radical Ideas

Lent. Day 38. Questions about Justice

Back on day 38 of Lent, I had a conversation with a good friend about justice. We covered everything from how certain types of “sinners” feel excluded from the church to the food industry and that whole debacle. People getting oppressed, people being manipulated and exploited, people being kept out of the House of God. Don’t get me started on pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies and the medical industries. All the things that go on every day all around us and yet are surprisingly easy to ignore.

Justice issues are easy to ignore if you’re not actively receiving injustice. If you’re not being oppressed or marginalized or manipulated or denied basic human rights, then forgetting about the injustices of our brothers and sisters can be easy.

I must confess, I do not make myself as aware of injustice in the world as I could. I dare not say that I will pursue this sort of understanding later “when I have more time” for I know that time will never come. Rather, my resolution should be that, Yes! I will make myself more aware of injustice around me. Further, I must commit to making known what injustice I see, by whatever means are non-violently available to me.

In the conversation with my friend, we asked questions about what justice is and how it is brought about. Is justice solely in God’s hands? Or does God intend that we participate in His work with Him?

How much of life to we leave in God’s hands, the hand of fate, karma? Do we do this because our trust is just so great? Or do we leave justice and the fate of the world in these Bigger hands because we think we can’t do anything. Or worse, because we’re afraid to do anything. Or because we’re too lazy, don’t want responsibility, don’t want the dis-comfortability of what happens when we try to change things?

What if we all did what we knew was right for us and for those around us?